Investors pounced on some better-than-expected results found high up in Twitter’s earnings release. This included the fact that revenues in the second quarter jumped 124% to $312 million, and that the company earned $0.02 a share, slightly stronger than what analysts had been expecting.

What’s more, Wall Street analysts tallied by Zacks.com still expect Twitter — based on GAAP standards — to lose $0.98 a share in 2014 and another $0.87 a share in 2015. So it’s probably premature to regard the second-quarter results as a breakthrough for the profitless company.

User Growth Rebounds

To be fair, there were promising developments in the second quarter. Twitter reported that so-called timeline views, which are the company’s equivalent of page views, hit a record 173 billion in the quarter.

This was an important point, as timeline views in the prior quarter fell short of the company’s peak performance in 2013, despite the fact that there are more Twitter users than ever.

In the second quarter, the Twitter’s so-called average monthly active users (MAUs) rose an impressive 24%. Active users who use mobile surged even more, by 29% in the past year to 211 million.

By comparison, timeline views grew a relatively modest 15%, which means the company still needs to work on converting Twitter account holders into truly active users.

This morning, three research firms changed their rating on Twitter stock in the wake of the company’s earnings results. Bank of America upgraded its recommendation on the stock to a “buy”. UBS upgraded its rating to a “neutral”. And Pivotal Research downgraded the shares to a “sell” as Thursday evening’s surge pushed the stock above analysts’ target price.